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On Poppy's beach seashells I find. My bucket's filled with every kind. I keep the ones I like the best. to hide home in my treasure chest.

Come spend a sweet summer's day exploring and enjoying the curiosities and beauties of a rural Newfoundland beach, as seen through the eyes of a little child. Filled with beautiful illustrations and lyrical verse, here is a warm and happy adventure that is both uniquely Newfoundland - as well as universal in its celebration of nature, nostalgia and joyful childhood innocence.

Bio

A native Newfoundlander, Susan Pynn is a professional writer with a background in Marketing and Communications. She is devoted to her family, animals of all shapes and sizes and literature. Susan travels throughout North America to promote her books. On Poppy's Beach is Susan Pynn's fourth book for young readers, following her success of A Puppy Story (Creative, 2007), The Colours of my Home: A Portrait of Newfoundland and Labrador (Creative, 2007), and The Jelly Bean Row (Creative, 2012).

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It's Bring Your Kids to Work Day and Dad is taking Nat and her polar bear to Mr. McDermott's Detergents and Soaps. Nat promises Bear will be no trouble until she hears that Floppery Flippery Slippery Slop sound, and she wonders just who else Bear has brought with him. Surely a big polar bear and all his pesky friends couldn't get into too much bubbly troubly in a soap factory, right?

Bio

Lisa Dalrymple lives in Fergus Ontario with her husband and three creative kids. She loves to travel and has trekked through Europe, the Andes, the Amazon and parts of Asia. She keeps saying that one day she will visit the Arctic to see polar bears in their natural habitat. Her previous books include If It's No Trouble... A Big Polar Bear (Creative 2012) and Skink on the Brink (Fitzhenry & Whiteside 2013).

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Natalie's finished her Christmas list. It's really quite perfect with one little twist: A remote control scooter, some candy to share and, if it's no trouble, a big polar bear.

Bio

Lisa Dalrymple loves to travel and has lived in such countries as South Korea, Thailand and Scotland. She now lives with her husband and their three children in Fergus, Ontario. If It's No Trouble... A Big Polar Bear(Creative 2012) is her first published book. Her story Skink on the Brink won The Writers' Union of Canada's Writing for Children Competition in 2011. It is due to be released as a picture book by Fitzhenry & Whiteside in 2013.

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Yaffle the seagull is fed up with the rain, drizzle, and fog in his home province of Newfoundland. He dreams of flying down south to the sunshine, but saddens at the thought of leaving all that he loves behind. So, one day Yaffle comes up with a surprising plan he thinks will solve his dilemma!

Bio

A graphic artist for 25 years, Nancy Keating's evocative illustrations have covered several Newfoundland books for adults and children.

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Awards & Reviews

Awards

Canadian Children's Book Centre Best books for Kids and Teens 2013, Commended

Reviews

"The illustrations in the book, done entirely in coloured pencil, are vivid, evocative and extremely detailed, down to the patches on Yaffle's backpack to the Tilt House Bakery gingerbread cookies he shares with his friends..."Tara Bradbury, The Telegram

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Find Scruncheon and Touton 2 is the much anticipated follow up to Find Scruncheon and Touton: All Around Newfoundland. Join Scruncheon the Newfoundland Dog and Touton the Labrador Retriever as they adventure through some of Newfoundland's most recognizable places. For those from Newfoundland and for those living away, Find Scruncheon and Touton 2 will provide endless hours of fun for the whole family.

Bio

Nancy Keating and her daughter, Laurel, are both award-winning artists. Search for Scruncheon and Touton is their first published collaboration, and Laurel's first-ever published book. They live in Portugal Cove.

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One day as the great Eagle flew high above the forest he came upon a small bundle containing seven teachings, teachings that will bring balance harmony and peace to all who practice them. But the teachings come with a simple warning: beware of envy and greed.
As Eagle spreads the seven teachings throughout the forest, he forgets to heed their warning and soon the forest is lost to jealousy, greed and selfishness. Eagle must save the forest, and he soon learns the most important teaching of all: truth.
“When you see Eagle flying high in the beautiful sky above, ask yourself this: Am I proud of myself? Have I respected myself, others, and the environment? Have I stood up for someone and stood up for what is right? Have I practiced the teaching of truth?”
This engaging story, with beautiful illustrations by Dozay (Arlene) Christmas, allows the reader to reconnect to and understand the seven teachings and their meaning in relation to themselves and society as a whole. The Lost Teachings is a story about the importance of the seven teachings — wisdom, respect, love, honesty, humility, courage and truth — and how interconnected they are in achieving balance, harmony and peace for individuals and society as a whole.

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”Once again, Michael James Isaac and Dozay Christmas have demonstrated that art and story telling are important means for promoting love of one’s own culture and appreciation across cultures. This beautifully illustrated and wonderfully told narrative is a valuable resource for helping children, and adults, grow in ways that claims and reclaims a balance among individual, community, and societal character building.” — Randall B. Lindsey, California State University

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Welcome to the world of JonArno Lawson, where sound rules supreme. It's a bizarre world, where wolves live on the moon, bears inhabit the sun and bleating lambs get stuck in traffic jams. Here Sleeping Beauty is an insomniac, Little Red Riding Hood is a wolf and Snow White just needed a friend to tell her to be wary of strangers.

Bio

Born in Hamilton, Ontario and raised nearby in Dundas, JonArno Lawson's most formative experiences as a child occurred in Florida which he visited for an extended stay at the age of eight. Happy to be missing almost an entire year of school, he filled his days at the beach digging holes and collecting shells and coconuts, travelling in glass-bottomed boats and touring nature parks that featured free-roaming monkeys and parrots. He wore a ship captain's hat at all times, and a green pouch in which he kept dozens of ticket stubs, a musket ball, brass souvenir coins that bore the faces of various American presidents, and other treasures which he hoards to this day. JonArno is a two-time winner of the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Children's Poetry, for Black Stars in a White Night Sky in 2007 and again in 2009 for A Voweller's Bestiary. In 2011 his poetry collection Think Again was short-listed for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award. JonArno lives in Toronto with his wife Amy Freedman and his children Sophie, Ashey and Joseph, all of whom assist the author with phrases, topics and sometimes even complete lines for use in his poems.

Alec Dempster was born in Mexico City in 1971 but moved to Toronto as a child. In 1995 he moved back to Mexico and settled in Xalapa, Veracruz, where his relief prints eventually became infused with the local tradition of son jarocho music. Alec's conversations with rural musicians, presented along with thirty linoleum portraits, have been published recently as Faces and Voices of Son Jarocho. He has produced six CDs of son jarocho recorded in the field but is perhaps best known for his two loter&iacutea games – El Fandanguito, Lotería de Sones Jarochos, and the Lotería Huasteca – which include over a hundred prints. He has had solo exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Mexico, France and Spain. Alec now lives in Toronto. His own son jarocho group, Café Con Pan, has recorded two CDs, the most recent being Nuevos Caminos a Santiago. They are currently the recipients of a Popular Music grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

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Awards & Reviews

Awards

The Lion and the Unicorn Award 2013, Winner

Reviews

Playful in his use of sound patterns reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, Lawson's lyrics uncover an acerbic and clever wit often found in both comedians and confuscians. In the line drawn between child and adult in Lawson's poetry, the reader finds images reminiscent of school, bible stories and playtime, though their use in the wordplay suggests a requirement for adult experience to grasp their connotations. There is a sense of darkness and lost innocence in Lawson's work, despite a creative spirit that prevails with an unassailable sense of humour.

?A delight for fans of Shel Silverstein ... this volume touches on everything from Sleeping Beauty being afraid to fall back asleep to lunar foxes, to blubbery bears eating mounds of blueberries. Lawson plays with his words both visually and orally, happy, as Stephen Fry puts it, to ?yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it.??

?JonArno Lawson doesn't see the world the way other people do, THANK GOODNESS. His most recent book release is Down in the Bottom of the Bottom of the Box, surreal poems decorated with the paper cuts of artist Alec Dempster.?

?These poems feel like genuine nursery rhymes – mysterious, welcoming, polished by time and telling, concerned with real-life dilemmas, and suffused with an energetic appreciation of a rich variety of creatures, both animal and human.... Lawson?s rigorous craftsmanship results in structures that are sturdy and welcoming.?

?JonArno Lawson's Down in the Bottom of the Bottom of the Box, with papercut illustrations by Alec Dempster, turns words on their heads and uses them to reimagine familiar notions and stories.?

?Down in the Bottom of the Bottom of the Box is a collection of nonsense poems for the young (and young at heart) in the tradition of Dennis Lee and Dr. Seuss. Lawson starts his poems from sounds and builds with orality in mind. The results are clever and fun to read.?

?Not since Shel Silverstein's classic A Light in the Attic have I found myself so utterly spellbound by a collection of children's poetry. JonArno Lawson sets a new standard, one that many will emulate and, I suspect, none will surpass. An extraordinary and truly delightful hymn to the imagination.?

?What I think is most important to remember about poetry for children is how they themselves play with language upon learning, words have fluid and flexible meanings, they are representative of big, massive imaginations, and hold all kinds of potential – all of which Lawson bottles and bursts out in various ways throughout the book. From the more whimsical in the collection, something like ?The Minimum Amount of Money? ... , to poems that have a touch of what I hesitate to call magical realism ... , there's a consistent dedication to not only how language presents itself on the page, but how it sounds as its spoken.?

?Down in the Bottom of the Bottom of the Box is an excellent work of poetry to consider, and is not to be missed.?

?...there?s no denying that, light and enjoyable as it is, Down in the Bottom of the Box contains real poetry. Recommended to anyone who likes to smile while reading poems.?

?Reminiscent of Ogden Nash?s, Lawson?s poetry combines deft wordplay with unexpected (often humorous) rhymes and a devotion to showcasing the rhythmic potential of the English language. But as always, Lawson?s signature focus on word sounds takes center stage. With masterful brevity, the majority of the poems stand alone as single quatrain stanzas, however, even the briefest poems contain a mouthful.?

`Down in the Bottom [is] unquestionably the best book of children's poetry published in 2012.... In its linguistic and intellectual play, accompanied throughout by Alec Dempster's bold, compelling paper cuts-black and white with judicious bursts of color- Down in the Bottom reminds us why we love poetry. And more, it reminds us just how lovely a book of poetry can be.... [I]t is high time to acknowledge that JonArno Lawson may be the foremost children's poet in North America. To borrow a phrase from W. B. Yeats, he's the King of the Cats. Cognizant that our pronouncement might appear to be a touch hubristic (if not downright self-congratulatory credit snatching), and of the potential irony in ending an essay that reflects on the vagaries of blurbs and blurbitude with a big fat blurb, we can only point to the record-indeed, point to the poems themselves-and say, in our defense: res ipsa loquitur: the thing speaks for itself. We are merely obligated to hear.'

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After her mother dies, fourteen year old Zoe is whisked away to Newfoundland to live with a father she has never met. In the tiny village of Port au Choix, she gets caught up in solving the mystery of finding the habitation site of the Maritime Archaic Indian, an ancient culture that lived in the area more than four thousand years ago. At the same time, Zoe has her own mystery to solve. Going through her mother's journals, she discovers secrets that baffle and confuse her. Could Zoe's life have been nothing more than an elaborate lie?

Bio

Alice Walsh graduated fron St. Mary's University with a degree in Criminology and English, and from Acadia with a master's degree in Children's Literature. She has worked as a preschool teacher, probation officer, creative writing instructor and hospital ward clerk. Alice has written numerous articles and short stories for newspapers, magazines and literary journals, and has written educational material for various publications. Her published work includes a non-fiction book for adults, as well as four children's books. She has won the Childen's Book Centre Our Choice Award and has been nominated twice for the Hackmatack Award. In 2005, her book Pmiuk; Prince of the North won the Ann Connor Brimer award.

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Awards

Canadian Children's Book Centre Best books for Kids and Teens 2013, Commended

Reviews

"This contemporary family drama ultimately proves to be equal parts mystery. Young readers will appreciate Zoe's feelings of isolation and abandonment as she is shipped off to these newly discovered relatives, her fears and apprehensions about starting at a new school and going on a first date, and her feeling of betrayal when she learns the full truth...an interesting tale of family and self-discovery." Lisa Ducet, Atlantic Books Today, Spring 2013.

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If Shakespeare's Cordelia met Andy Jones's Jack, the resulting offspring might be The Birchy Maid, a saucy, sensible, self-reliant heroine for the modern age. When a merchant prince sails into her life, she sets some very unusual conditions for marriage. This is a fairy tale for all ages, full of humour and wisdom.

Bio

Robin McGrath is the author or editor of fifteen books, including Trouble and Desire (1995), Escaped Domestics (1998), Hoist Your Sails and Run (1999), Donovan's Station (2002), Covenant of Salt (2005), and Livyers World(2007). She has published over two hundred pieces in magazines such as Beaver, Inuit Art Quarterly, Parchment, TickleAce, Fiddlehead and Room of One's Own. Robin was born in Newfoundland and lives in Labrador with her husband, provincial court judge, John Joy. She is a member of The Writers Union of Canada and the Letterset Association of Newfoundland and Labrador.

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"The illustrations accompany the text beautifully, supporting and enhancing the tale." - Joan Sullivan, The Telegram

Resource links reviewer, Laura Reilly says, "Rochelle Baker's illustrations surrounded in colourful flowery frames evoke an era of a time long ago. The depiction of the Birchy Maid, her family, her old and new homes and the people who live there complements the text very well."

Reviewer Laura Reilly from Resource Links has this to say about The Birchy Maid, "This theme of three daughters, with the youngest comparing her love to him as 'dear as salt' has been told and modified by generations of story tellers. Robin McGrath tells her interpretation with humour and finesse, with a touch of 'The Rock' (Newfoundland)."

Buried Truths is reviewed in Resource Links, reviewer Patricia Jermey had this to say, "This novel captures the casual intimacy of life in a small Newfoundland town, and includes many threads to interest teen readers: archaeology, adoption, romance, Shakespeare, and visual art."

The Birchy Maid is a highly engaging story with the ideal instance of comeuppance in the end. ..The illustrations are full of bright, saturated colours and complement the classic feel of the text. Especially charming are the ornately designed first letters on each page, at once unique and traditional.Amber Allen, CM Review